


Wedding or Marriage

by RoseApothecary



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Crying, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Season/Series 05, a lot of crying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-14
Updated: 2019-12-14
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:49:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21788548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoseApothecary/pseuds/RoseApothecary
Summary: Patrick and David have an emotional moment discussing their wedding and their future.
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Comments: 30
Kudos: 140
Collections: Schitt's Creek Open Fic Night 2.0





	Wedding or Marriage

They had a fight. They’d had disagreements in the past, but nothing like this. Never anything this big that made it feel like he’d been shoved off a cliff and was falling into a canyon with no bottom. This dizzying, unsteady feeling was making him feel sick and scared and so unsure. ‘David left. David left. David left.’ Patrick’s mind wouldn’t stop chanting that at him. His stupid unhelpful mind that was supposed to be on his side. ‘David left’ it sang at him until the words sounded made up and garbled. David LEFT.

They had a fight and David left. David left because they had a fight. But the thing was, Patrick didn’t ask David to stay. He was so mad. He wanted David to leave and get out of his face and stop yelling and stop flailing and just stop. Did he ask David to leave? Well. He wouldn’t have asked. They were beyond nice at that point. He would have told him to get out. Yelled it. Screamed it while he whipped the damn door open and gestured wildly for David to go.

Patrick sighed and scrubbed his hands over his face and looked down at his left hand. Second finger from the left. Fourth finger from the right. Wait, was he supposed to count his thumb? Did it really matter? His pale empty ring finger was just there mocking him. ‘Look at what you did,’ it screamed at him. ‘We were supposed to have something pretty right here in six weeks!’ Something that announced to the world: I AM HIS AND HE IS MINE. Something shiny and gold and engraved with words David wouldn’t let him read until six weeks from now. But probably actually never now. Those words were probably something that someone was going to see in a pawn shop when they picked up his little velvet box off the shelf and looked inside and hummed sadly that ‘yep, that was a nice ring’ and ‘too bad for the guy that didn’t get to wear it’ and ‘oh wow, look at what’s written inside.’

He was falling, but not really. He couldn’t make this feeling stop. They had a real fight. A really real one because David wanted a pretty wedding. More than a pretty wedding actually. He wanted an extravaganza. A lavish party with gardens full of flowers and fountains. Stone paths flanked by manicured hedges. A sprawling estate in David’s preferred sand and stone color palette. Staircases and fireplaces and wing back chairs and ballrooms and grand pianos and staff in tuxedos. Valet parking and tiny sandwiches and exquisite cakes and an altar and rows and rows of chairs and so much champagne. David wanted all of the beautiful things.

And look, it’s not like Patrick didn’t want them, too. He did want them. Just not for their wedding. Just not for one day. Just not to throw a party and be done with it. He wanted a garden with a manicured lawn. But one that he could manicure himself with the push mower they kept in the little shed. Patrick couldn’t see the wedding and the party and the guests but he could see the after. He didn’t need a mood board to see what came after. The house. The house they walked through four days ago. The house he told his parents about because he wanted them to know all of the things now. The small, but respectable, pale blue house with two bedrooms and an office. With one fireplace that he would get to chop wood for. With a tiny eat in kitchen that they’d always bump into each other in. With room, David promised Patrick, for an upright piano. With a pretty white fence outside and all of his dreams on the inside. The house he had seen in his dreams of him and David before he’d actually ever even seen the house.

That’s the problem, though. That’s the thing. The fight. The reason David left. Patrick told David they couldn’t have both. They just couldn’t. It wasn’t “financially feasible”. And yes, he really did use air quotes when he said it. Those were the words he had started off not yelling. But he was mad. David wanted a stupid party. A giant, elaborate, over the top, show off party. He wanted live music and to dance and drink and eat and show off to their friends and family. David wanted the spectacle of it all.

They could do it. Have the big wedding. They could book that place right now. It would even be fun. David in a gorgeous tuxedo, hugging his body in all the correct ways. They could pin on the boutonnieres and dance the night away. And the night would be perfect.

But after. Patrick wanted the after so badly. He wanted to wake up with his husband curled around him, breathing into his neck, hand slung across his waist, keeping him tight and close and safe. Patrick wanted to brew coffee for David and fill his mug with too much milk and sugar and cocoa and love. He wanted to get on his knees in the shower and wake up his husband properly. He wanted to pack their lunches in that too-small kitchen while David halfheartedly complained that he’d rather eat at the café while still spreading peanut butter on bread for them. He wanted to walk hand in hand with his husband to the store that they built together. He wanted to work side by side all day and then he wanted to walk back home and snuggle on the couch and live the life he was always supposed to have. And forever would be perfect.

David left. David left. David left. Oh god, he left. He could feel everything falling apart around him. The world was crumbling and he had done this. He expected David to know. To read his mind. Patrick didn’t tell him. He didn’t say what he needed to say. Instead he got mad and he got irritated and he then he got really mad and he had looked David in the eye and told him he had to choose between their wedding and their marriage. And then he told David to leave. He had only wanted to think. He didn’t want David to really leave. But those words had been hurled at David so many times and by so many different people in the past that David had learned to just go and not try to fight and not stay and be more hurt and embarrassed. He did that. He was no better. He loved David and he did that to him.

Patrick needed to fix this. To say all the things he should have said. To explain that when he closed his eyes all he could see was their future. That his dreams were filled with David. Every recent thought or memory or idea he had was entwined with David. That the thought of losing him was the worst pain he could ever imagine and just the thought of a life without David made him sick. He had to find him and make this right. To tell David he was sorry and he loved him. To explain to him that he wanted to invest in their life together, in their future, instead of just their wedding.

Patrick threw on his coat and haphazardly placed a hat on his head. He grabbed his phone and keys and flung open the front door and nearly tripped over the sweatered man leaning against the door frame. David looked up at him and then quickly away. His eyes were red and puffy. Tear tracks stained both cheeks. He was just sitting there, hugging his legs to his chest, bare knees poking out of the designer rips in his jeans. He sat there just twirling one of his gold rings round and round his ring finger.

“David, I – ,” Patrick began.

“I didn’t –,” David started at the same time.

“Come inside. Come here and we’ll talk,” Patrick reached down to pull David up. David rose up on his own and left space between them. Too much space. He could see that David was scared and shaking and it only made him feel worse.

“David.” Patrick knew he was crying and he just let the tears fall. He was ashamed that his actions had done this to David. Ashamed that his actions had made David afraid to be close to him, afraid to come inside their home. “Please, David. Just come inside and we’ll talk.” Patrick went in first and felt a spark of hope when David followed him inside and shut the door quietly behind himself.

Patrick tossed off his coat and hat and sat down on the couch. He gestured next to him for David to sit down. Instead, David chose to sit in one of the attractive, but decidedly uncomfortable, wooden chairs just so he could have some more space. David just sat there staring at a spot on the floor, twirling his rings. Patrick wasn’t sure how to begin. He didn’t know how to tell David everything he needed to say. He knew he was terrible at trying to express his emotions.

Just as Patrick opened his mouth to try and say something David lifted his head to look at Patrick. He looked small in that chair. Small and scared. He looked the way Patrick’s heart felt. Patrick could see David do his best to look brave, to look strong, to take a steadying breath before getting out, “Do you want your rings back?” And as brave as David was trying to be he couldn’t stop the one lone tear that betrayed him, running down his left cheek and dripping silently onto the floor.

‘Do you want your rings back?’ echoed through Patrick’s head. It was all he could hear and all he could feel. The words reverberated in his brain like someone beating a gong. ‘Do you want your rings back? Do you want your rings back?’ But that wasn’t really the question David was asking and he knew that. He was asking if they were over. If there was even going to be a wedding to worry about. If everything they’d built and fought for and grown together was just done.

“What?” Patrick’s reply was thin. Watery. Like when he’d go to the lake as a kid and open his eyes under water and try to talk to the fish. It barely came out and it sounded like nothing. The tears flooding his eyes actually made it feel like he was underwater. Drowning. He was drowning and he needed to breathe. David was his air and he needed him. “David,” Patrick sobbed out. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. David.” And then he broke. He put his face in his hands and sobbed uncontrollably. He’d never cried this much in his entire life. But he’d also never had anything that was worth crying this much about.

David moved from the chair to the couch and carefully placed his hand on Patrick’s back. He was unsure but he couldn’t see Patrick like this and not react. Patrick turned into David. Melted into him. Grabbed two big handfuls of David’s sweater and buried his face in David’s neck and just cried. Cried and cried and mumbled ‘sorry’ and ‘forgive me’ and ‘please’ over and over until the words made no sense and his eyes finally ran dry.

They sat there for a long time. Patrick’s head in David’s neck just breathing him in. David’s hand rubbing tentative circles up and down Patrick’s spine. And finally, finally, Patrick was ready and able to talk. He pulled back and looked up at his fiance. At David’s face that had been crying, too. His long black lashes clumped together with tears, nose running, and Patrick wanted him forever. Would fight for him forever.

“I’m sorry, David. I shouldn’t have made you leave. I shouldn’t have yelled. I should have just talked to you. Told you what I wanted,” Patrick started hesitantly. He could feel David’s hand lift carefully off his back. He could see that hand join the other one to twist those four gold rings again. “David,” he reached out to still David’s hands turning those rings. “I want you. I want our life together. I was afraid.”

David looked at Patrick. “Afraid of me?”

“No, David, of course not…. I was afraid that you wanted the big wedding. The party. That you weren’t serious about starting our life together. That maybe you weren’t seeing past the wedding to everything else that could come after.”

“Everything else,” David repeated, trying to soak up the meaning in Patrick’s words. “So you thought that because I wanted the big wedding that I wasn’t serious about our future together?” David made a face. One that Patrick had seen before. David was offended and hurt.

“I know, David. And I’m so sorry. You have so many ideas and plans for our wedding and I want to give them all to you, I’d give you everything if I could, but…”

“But… I walked through that house, too, Patrick. If you think I’m not thinking about our future together, you’re wrong. I’d marry you right now, in the back of Bob’s Garage if that would prove it to you. I mean… that’s not going to happen, because god no. Maybe the town hall. Or the café…. The point is I don’t need the huge wedding. Yes, I want it,” he sighed. “I never thought I’d ever get married. Ever. And now that I am I just want it all. But I don’t want anything at the expense of our future. More than anything I just want you.”

David looked into Patrick’s eyes and Patrick could see his whole life before him. Every hope, every dream, every wish. They were all David.

“I need you to see something,” David said as he rose from the couch and walked over to the small desk. He pulled out a small black velvet box and set it on the coffee table in front of Patrick before sitting back down. “Open it.”

Patrick knew what this was. The ring they’d chosen together for him. His wedding band. The one that David had taken to be inscribed with words he’d see in six weeks. He reached for the little box and held it carefully in his hands. “David, I don’t need to see this now.”

“No, you really do. I want you to see it. Open the box.”

Patrick lifted the lid and inside shone his beautiful golden wedding band. It sparkled up at him like it held all the answers. With shaking hands he plucked the ring out and turned it to read the engraved words: _Beginning of forever_. Patrick’s breath caught in his throat and he looked up at David.

“I think about our future all the time, Patrick. About buying a house with you. About running our store. About… about growing old with you,” David’s tears started again and he was having difficulty getting out what he wanted to say. “If you think I’m marrying you for a party then you’re just wrong,” he whispered. “Because I want it all with you.”

“I want it all with you, too. I love you more than anything. We’ll figure out the wedding and we’ll figure out the house. But David, you are all I’ll ever need and all I’ll ever want. As long as you’re next to me I’ll have the life I want.”

David closed his eyes and let his forehead fall against Patrick’s. “I love you.”


End file.
